Why Your Online Reputation is Important – Part 2

Why Your Online Reputation Is Important

How Online Reviews Affect Your Business

A study conducted in 2015 revealed that a whopping 40 percent of consumers form an opinion by reading just one to three online reviews about a business. This figure has risen from 29 percent (previous year). The reviews consumers are reading about your business are having a huge impact on the choices they are making. This means online reviews are ultimately determining whether your business is thriving or slowly dying. The following info-graphic depicts the massive influence reviews are having on your business.

Why You Should Take Yelp Seriously

Most of us know about Yelp, but many local businesses do not grasp how Yelp is affecting their bottom lines. Yelp uses star ratings to help consumers judge the quality of a business. Here’s how Yelp’s star rating work: the star ratings from each review are combined to create an average rating for a business. Then, to provide a more precise rating, Yelp narrows down that average rating to a half-star rating. A business could be rated as 3.5 stars.

If you don’t think there’s a significant difference between having 3 stars and 3.5 stars, you are sadly mistaken. A group of economists from UC Berkeley in California conducted a study, which revealed that just a half star difference in a company’s rating on Yelp can deeply impact the company’s profit margin. That is especially true with local businesses because many offer the same services and products. Businesses that have barely four stars on Yelp sell approximately 19 percent more than business, that have almost four stars. Consumers are not only reading reviews about your business on Yelp, they are keeping an extremely close eye on your stars.

Yelp only makes up part of your online reputation. Click here to get your free reputation report and find out what your customers are saying about you all over the web.